Mint Museum Uptown presents Seeing the World Within: Charles Seliger in the 1940s, on view Feb 11, 2012 – May 13, 2012.
Seeing the World Within: Charles Seliger in the 1940s focuses on the astonishing paintings and drawings created by the American artist Charles Seliger during the first decade of his career. Born in 1926, Seliger quickly acquired a strong working knowledge of early twentieth century modernism. But it was the fantastic imagery, inventive processes, and creative freedom of Surrealism that truly captured his attention, fired his imagination, and inspired him to develop his own mature aesthetic between 1942 and 1950. Although his work was rooted in the same basic principles and ideas as that of the Abstract Expressionists, many of whom he exhibited alongside in the 1940s, Seliger had the strength to find a distinctly personal voice and artistic vocabulary. Because of this, he was given his first solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s “Art of this Century” gallery in 1945. He was just nineteen. By the end of the decade Seliger had narrowed his focus and further honed his style, resulting in an approach and an aesthetic that defined his work until his death in 2009.
Seeing the World Within is thefirst exhibition to focus on the groundbreaking paintings Seliger created during the first decade of his career and the first museum-organized exhibition of Seliger’s work in thirty years. It brings together approximately thirty-five of his best works from the 1940s, drawn from public and private collections as well as his estate.
Following its debut at the Mint, Seeing the World Within will travel to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy (9 June-16 September 2012), and the Munson-Williams Proctor Art Institute, Utica, New York (20 October 2012-20 January 2013).
Mint Museum UPTOWN
at Levine Center for the Arts
500 South Tryon Street
Charlotte, NC 28202
(704) 337-2000
www.mintmuseum.org